OCZ ARC 100 240GB SSD Review

By Joe Evans

A Closer Look at the ARC 100:

Opening the case required the removal of four screws which were concealed beneath the front label at the corners.

OCZ ARC 100 240GB Open

Once open, the PCB is revealed showing four more screws that hold it in place.

OCZ ARC 100 240GB PCB

On the first side of the PCB, we find eight of the sixteen NAND chips along with one of the two cache chips.

OCZ ARC 100 240GB NAND

The Toshiba 19nm MLC NAND carries part number TH58TEG7DDKBA4C and each are 16GB in capacity. This is the first time an OCZ drive has housed Toshiba’s 19nm NAND.

OCZ ARC 100 240GB PCB

The other side of the PCB has the remaining NAND packages along with another cache chip plus the controller which is obscured by a thermal pad.

OCZ ARC 100 240GB Cache

The dual Micron branded cache chips, one on each side, are 256MB in density for a total of 512GB on board for caching.

OCZ ARC 100 240GB Indilinx

The Indilinx Barefoot 3 M10 controller (IDX500M10-BC) is 100% OCZ designed and the same we’ve seen previously in several of the more recent Vertex drives but obviously with some firmware updates to support the smaller architecture NAND. It has been replaced as the flagship controller by the IDX500M00-BC but is still a very viable controller with proven performance and reliability. As usual, it supports TRIM and garbage collection as well as 256-bit AES-compliant encryption.